BLUE ON BLUE: ‘You need to ask first’: Iowa teacher blasts Biden for grabbing her hands when she asked him a question.
While speaking to students at the University of New Hampshire in 2011, then-Vice President Joe Biden told men in the audience that “no matter what a girl does, no matter how she’s dressed, no matter how much she’s had to drink—it’s never, never, never, never, never OK to touch her without her consent.”
One of Mr. Biden’s signature issues during the Obama administration was fighting an alleged epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses. He promoted the debunked claim that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted as undergraduates—the result of surveys using an impossibly broad definition of sexual assault that encompassed any conduct that, knowingly or not, made someone uncomfortable.
The Obama administration issued guidelines to campuses in 2011 to combat the alleged crisis. Mr. Biden headlined the announcement. The guidance traduced due-process rights for students accused of sexual assault and threatened colleges and universities with federal investigations and potential funding reductions if they did not find more accused students and professors guilty.
Now those impossible standards are being applied to their proponents. Since last Friday, several women have accused Mr. Biden of making them uncomfortable during his interactions with them. One accuser, Caitlyn Caruso, told the New York Times that during an event about sexual assault at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Mr. Biden put his hand on her thigh and didn’t remove it even when she showed discomfort by shifting in her seat. She also said he hugged her “just a little bit too long.” . . .
When accused himself, Mr. Biden naturally fell back on all the arguments that are often dismissed when made by college men. He said it was never his “intention” to make women uncomfortable. He also acknowledged that “social norms have begun to change” without acknowledging that he helped lead the change—and hasn’t lived up to the standards he sought to impose on others.
The standards are stupid, but you know what Alinsky said about rulebooks.